With over 145 years of age between them, San Francisco Bay Railroad's dual S-2 switchers of State Belt Railroad lineage have now entered their final year of working together.

Come end of the year, SFBR in partnership with the Port of SF will take delivery of it's first new locomotive in 73 years - a KLW SE10B. As part of the terms of a local grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Air Management, we will be required to cut the engine block in one of our two Alco S-2's, currently slotted to be the #25.

After retirement, tentative plans call for donating and displaying the prime mover gutted State Belt #25 in front of either the Ferry Building or Pier 1 Embarcadero waterfront building next to the Port of SF headquarters.Pier 96 Railyard - San Francisco, CA - 01.03.2018

Brought to you by the same brains that concocted the Cash for Clunkers program, that removed many good affordable used cars from the market, thus raising the price of used cars and making it harder for the poor to afford to buy one.

"Exploratory conversations with the railroad’s management determined that their funding grant through California’s Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program, which enabled M & ET to purchase the cleaner burning genset units, was requiring them to destroy the engine blocks of the 70-tonners! This would have not only destroyed their historical integrity but rendered them inoperable and basically parts units or scrap. PSRMA did some investigating on their own and determined that the local air-quality agency had erred on the block-destruction interpretation and it wasn’t necessary."

As part of the terms of a local grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Air Management, we will be required to cut the engine block in one of our two Alco S-2's, currently slotted to be the #25.

If the local grant in question is, say, $100,000 or $250,000 (or even a lot more), and we're talking about an engine block that may be worth $1,000 scrapped or $3,000 if by some miracle you find the right desperate "Alco-haul-ic"..................

I agree, there may be a misunderstanding, and sending the engine block to another state may satisfy the conditions of the grant.

When the Pacific Harbor Line converted all their locomotives, many, but not all of the engines in their locomotives had their blocks or crankshaft cut. This was so they could get the grants to convert.

Some of the locomotives were converted with new engines, other left the state completely.

They had an ex-SP GP9 that came to Indiana, which had it's crankshaft cut in half. The railroad here, was going to convert it in to a slug, but it was never completed.

I think a couple of their SW1200 did leave the state intact.

I attended a UP locomotive auction several years ago, at Metro East industries in East St. Louis. They were selling a large lot of EMD SW1500s. Three of the best locomotives in the sale came from Texas and were part of a program there. All three of the locomotives had a hole cut in their blocks.

When I ask the UP man about it, he told me that it was a requirement to get a Texas state grant for genset locomotives. I ask why they did not use one of the junker locomotives that they had in the auction and he told me that the locomotive used for the credit, had to be a runner and they had to prove that it had been used in the area for a total of 3 years prior to it being used for the credit. Sad, but true.

A similar situation occurred here in Indiana. After Grasselli Tower was donated to Hoosier Valley and after we had moved it to the museum in North Judson, we asked the Indiana Harbor Belt to consider donating one of their last two EMD NW2's (numbers 8811 or 8814) to HVRM to "go with" the tower, once their impending retirements became official. Although we never got a formal reply, we had hopes that the IHB might seriously consider our request. However, they got funding for two Gensets and as parcel to that, they had to "destroy" four old diesels. Two of those were 8811 and 8814.

Maybe....MAYBE...you can see if somehow you can split the hairs between meeting the 'destruction' requirement and being repairable.....a hole in a block on a sleeved engine may not be the end of the world.

Nothing new, however, they have been destroying old engines for years. A lot of standby generators go out of the country to become prime power in some 3rd world country, so replacing one for 'emissions' does 'nothing' if they go from 25 hours a year runtime to 24 hours a day runtime..

A lot of standby generators go out of the country to become prime power in some 3rd world country, so replacing one for 'emissions' does 'nothing' if they go from 25 hours a year runtime to 24 hours a day runtime..

You hit that one exactly Robert.

In the last few years dozens of 1960s era EMD MP36 and MP45 housed generating units retired from peaking plants in the Northeastern US have been shipped out for use as base load power plants in South America where they are typically operated 5X to 10X the hours per day they were in the United States.

They were supposed to be replaced by clean energy generation sources which have been consistently blocked by the local rich folks who do not want wind turbines or fields of solar panels within their view. So all this week in the low temperatures we are hearing from the media about how the area is in a "power crisis".

I can remember when there was a debate over the risk to health posed by high voltage transmission lines. All of that panic suddenly disappeared when wind energy that required stringing transmission lines all over the landscape for collection and distribution became fashionable.

PC

_________________Advice from the multitude costs nothing and is often worth just that. (EMD-1945)

Maybe....MAYBE...you can see if somehow you can split the hairs between meeting the 'destruction' requirement and being repairable.....a hole in a block on a sleeved engine may not be the end of the world.

Being placed in museum service should absolutely apply as "destruction" and this isn't a hard concept. The problem is, our lobbyists haven't been working that angle.

Quote:

Nothing new, however, they have been destroying old engines for years. A lot of standby generators go out of the country to become prime power in some 3rd world country, so replacing one for 'emissions' does 'nothing' if they go from 25 hours a year runtime to 24 hours a day runtime..

And that may be fine and good use of resources, depending on the emissions in question. Most of these are being done by local air quality management districts. Moving that generator to South America means its emissions are now well outside the Silicon Valley inversion zone, and the dense local jungle is happily scrubbing the air clean.

Foliage is really good at scrubbing emissions out of the air. The problem comes when the amount being generated is out of proportion to the available, functioning foliage, or when the foliage is seasonal -- and that is the problem you have in the various established AQMD's such as South Coast, Seattle, New York etc. No such thing as a South Alabama Air Quality Management District.

Rick Rowlands wrote:

Brought to you by the same brains that concocted the Cash for Clunkers program, that removed many good affordable used cars from the market, thus raising the price of used cars and making it harder for the poor to afford to buy one.

What you describe **was the purpose** of that program.

Whereas, BAAQMD's requirement (and I have some doubts the requirement is genuine) is a side effect.

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